‘Everything Available’– a vision for the developmentof the British Library servicesfor research

Dr Torsten ReimerHead of Research Serviceshttp://orcid.org/0000-0001-8357-9422

RLUK conference, London, 09 March 2017

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Living Knowledge

• Our mission is to make our intellectual heritage accessible to everyone, for research, inspiration and enjoyment.

• Living Knowledge articulates the vision of the British Library in 2023 as the most open, creative and innovative institution of its kind in the world.

• Roly Keating: ‘These are times of historic disruption in the whole global system of information and publication, and it seems right that the great knowledge institutions – with their historic remit to think and act with a view far into the future – should play a full part in shaping the changes that lie ahead.’

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Disruption 1: new ways of working

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Disruption 2: discovery, access, user expectations

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Disruption 2: discovery, access, user expectations

https://www.jisc.ac.uk/reports/researchers-of-tomorrow

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Disruption 2: discovery, access, user expectations

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Disruption 3: Budgets, subscriptions, VfM

£

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Disruption 4: open science & scholarly communication

• Access• Data• Source• Science• …

Open

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How to respond?

• Add value, be a partner in content creation and research

• Bring content to the user (even if the ‘user’ is a machine)

• Collections in a global world (preserve locally, discover globally)

• Grow capability for discovery and access services

• Focus on user experience, usability and value proposition

• Tailored content provision

• Move to platform / infrastructure provision

• Replace/update all core library systems

• Deliver more in partnership

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The five major change portfolios

Everyone Engaged

St Pancras Transformed

Boston Spa Renewed

Heritage Made Digital

Everything Available

BL’s most important and/or at-risk heritage collections fully digitised

All digitised content on a common platform

Interoperable with other great digitised heritage collections around the world

At-risk collections from other countries digitised with EAP/BL support

BL’s London campus completed and successfully serving 3m+ visitors per year

Improved and extended facilities for exhibitions, learning, research and business support

Alan Turing Institute fully established and integrated on campus

BL understood, valued and supported by people right across the UK

50,000 people paying membership fees at different levels

BL at the heart of a thriving professional network of major UK libraries and knowledge quarters

BSP established as international centre of excellence in collection management, physical and digital

Multiple partners from cultural and research sectors

New generation digital skills, diverse workforce

Attractive, high-quality campus facilities, buildings and landscape design

Comprehensive and immediate on-site access to the latest research content

Sustainable models for remote access

Common access and discovery tools for all content in BL collections – and beyond

Supporting scholarly communications nationally / globally

BL recognised as offering the best national research library service in the world

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Improving discovery

short• UX study and UI changes• Trial new approaches

mid• Review and possibly

replace current discovery

long• Take a lead in researching

& delivering new solutions

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ATI, AI and data driven library

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Access & use

• From just-in-case to just-in-time provision

• Tailored delivery, feature OA content

• Open up collections:– BL API platform– universal viewer

• Supporting research: BL Labs, data analytics,plans for Digital Research and AV Suite

• Reconsider infrastructure for access and preservation

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Replacing the Digital Library System

• Primary driver: enhance BL capacity

• Opportunity to offer preservation and access services to others

Current system Replacement

Developed in-house ten years ago Dramatic increase in scalability

750 TB, replicated over four sites Multi-tenancy enabled

Preservation-focused system Preservation and access

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Repository services and questions

• EThOS, widely used BL repository service for theses,to be replatformed (with preservation capability?)

• BL needs own repository function

• Discussion with partners abouta shared repository service

• Open access preservation?

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BL data strategy

‘Our vision for the British Library is that research data are as integrated into our collections, research and services as text is today.’

Data Archiving and Preservation

Data Discovery, Access and Reuse

Data CreationData Management

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Service layers

Institutions

(Inter)national infrastructure

On-site & on-line

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(Start of a) roadmap

Short-termImprove discovery solutions

User registration andremote access

Tailored delivery and just-in-time-provision of content

API platform(starting with EThOS)

Improve user experience

Develop open accessstrategy and policy

Lay groundwork to implement the BL data policy

Scope services for proposed Digital Reading Room

Medium-termImproved whole discovery

architecture

Enhanced identifier and digital preservation services

Shared services model and national infrastructure

Make Library collections accessible through external

tools/infrastructures

Appropriate on-site support for data-driven research and

digital/AV materials

BL as custodian for culturally relevant business data

Long-termNew approaches to discovery,

including AI-based systems

Exceptional increase in TDM capacity for heritage content

and BL collections more

Provide support for digital research lifecycle, working

with partners

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Making everything available means working together

• No single institution can crack this

• Time for more coordination at national level and beyond

• Collect jointly, preserve nationally, discover internationally

Two concrete things:

• Skills: work shadowing and placements

• Repository / preservation workshop this spring